I stood, weakly, the empty revolver in my hand. A symbol of the god of futility.
Above us, on the bridge, I saw Gunther lean toward Harding. Paper money changed hands. Paper blood.
* * *
A month.
The stagnant air stifles us, while the spotlight orb of the sun burns every metal surface to a constant sizzle.
The porters continue to spill ore into the hold.
The beer is gone. Alcohol in the form of British rum, a necessity in the tropics, is dangerously low. Citrus, that preventer of scurvy, is almost finished. Water is rationed. The curries, so delicious at first, now seem to have blocked our every pore, flavoring the insides of our mouths and nostrils with their sickeningly sweet stench, which pervades our lives—our urine and even our bowel movements seem to belch the curry out of our tired and gaunt frames. Feverish eyes follow wherever I go, as I attempt to keep the men on tasks for which they have lost all heart.
Our cold locker now holds three corpses, the Frenchman killed in the fight, another—a Russian—throat slit while he slept, the result of some personal vendetta, and an Egyptian whose penis was severed under mysterious circumstances by an Englishman who refuses to answer questions, even after ten days in lock-up. There is no local police, and Harding would never allow them aboard if there was, so we watch over our own as they turn into criminals and murderers.
I don't know how I've managed to hold the rest together and kept them from killing each other. None of the officers can find cartridges for their weapons. Captain Harding says there will be no shooting aboard his ship. Apparently stabbing and mutilation are allowed, even encouraged. I already know what I will report when we return, but I am intelligent enough to wonder how many will, indeed, return. The radio shack is held by an armed Gunther, who has watched over us on those occasions when Harding has engaged a driver and guides to take him into the Old City. It seems he is negotiating with someone, for long sessions of harangue coming from his cabin have been heard by everyone. Sullivan and Bentz have become the only two I trust, my eyes and ears, while at least one—Idalgo, an asshole of a slimy Spaniard who'd play his mother against his grandmother for a cut of any profits—seems to keep the captain informed of our actions.
This day takes Harding to the Old City—someone has said to the Cathedral, the Basilica Bom Jesu, where the dark-haired Sullivan tells me the remains of Saint Francis Xavier are kept, mummified in some sort of crypt.
"What the hell are you talking about?" I say, unbelieving.
"Ye think me daft, eh?" Sullivan shakes his head. "It's the God's own truth. Francis Xavier came here a missionary in 15-somethin' and was made some sort of local hero among the heathen, see? Then he gets sainted and whatnot, and his place of death is like a shrine."
"Where did you learn all this?"
"I had me some book learnin', you know! Okay, and I overheard Gunther talkin' to the Spaniard during last night's watch. They dint see me, lucky me, or maybe you'd be layin me out in the cold room."
"But what does all this have to do with Harding?"
"I don't know, and fuck if I care," says Sullivan, "but I think it ain't no coincidence his captainship is out yakkin' it up with some o' those lowlifes who're takin' him to the very cathedral where them bones are kept. Ya see?"
"No," I have to admit, "It can't be any coincidence."
"Watch your back, Core," he says. "You're our only chance outta this hellhole. Now let me go get rid of dinner—the faster the better!" He waddles away, holding his stomach.
By the end of the day, a Greek sailor is reported missing—a friend says he resolved to sneak ashore and find food and water despite our orders. Anything he carried will have made him a target for ambush. I add his name to the list and bide my time, but we never see him again.
* * *
In the last few weeks, Sullivan, Bentz, and I had begun to keep a closer eye on the dealings of our captain and his henchmen (for that was how we thought of them). Harding would shut himself up in his cabin for days; seemingly, venturing out only to stand watch briefly over the loading, which now had reached a halfway point. Of the crew, only Gunther and Idalgo would ever be seen entering his quarters, and then they would stay inside for hours. Occasionally, I thought I heard a faint chanting or singing, but it could just as easily have come from the porters who still lined the harbor front and pier when not in line.
One day, the locals who often piloted Harding to the Old City marched aboard with a woman. I watched as they dragged her up the gangplank, past the weighed-down porters and across the deck to the companionway that would lead them to the bridge and the captain's quarters. I was close enough to see her face, though half-veiled, her lovely eyes wide with fear. The veil fell away as she struggled, and I saw her lush, purple-stained lips and her straight, white teeth, a mouth and features as fetching as any woman I have ever seen in any of my travels, and I stepped up to intervene, but then Gunther was above me at the railing, a German handgun held loosely in his paw clanking on the metal of the rail, and my fear made me step back, to my undying shame. The woman disappeared into the captain's quarters with the rest of them, and we saw no one until the next day. We told ourselves we heard no screaming, no sounds of flesh upon flesh, and fist upon bone, or blade upon skin, or blood upon deck. We told ourselves we had not heard these things, and we saw no woman leave, though the haughty locals did take the captain to the cathedral again that following day, from which he did not return until late and then his return was accompanied not only by the locals, but also a group of near-naked porters who struggled with a long crate in the darkness. They maneuvered the crate into the captain's quarters, somehow, and I let the thoughts run unfettered through my imagination.
It was six weeks, forty-two endless days of searing heat and nights of damp, humid cold that cut through to the bone, since we had sighted the jungle and far-off hills of Goa and dropped anchor in Panaji's split, shallow harbor, and I knew that the men were at the end of their tether. A spate of less serious fights had occurred in the last few days, over a ladle-full of water or a bowlful of rice, but they'd ended in draws, the men too weakened by hunger and thirst to fight to the death, or even beyond a first landed fist. But where could you cool off men when the heat reached one hundred fifteen degrees Fahrenheit regularly, until the night dropped the mercury down to a frigid forty? We looked like castaways by then, as we had all taken to wearing ragged clothes, the fabric falling apart with the acid of our sweat and grease, and the lack of washing all catching up to us.
The hold appeared three-quarters full, if anyone was keeping track.
* * *
The days which led up to our desperate attempt to wrest command of the ship from Harding and his henchmen are blurs of barely-suppressed horror at the actions of the man who had been placed over us and who had become some sort of modern-day version of Bligh even though we had done nothing to deserve such punishment.
Harding's murder of an Egyptian sailor, caught stealing water from the galley in the middle of the cold Goan night, was perhaps the trigger, though we had seen and ignored many other triggering events. Though a smirking Harding swore to us from his perch above our heads that he had only lectured the dirty Arab, at which point the sailor had jumped him, wrested his sidearm from its holster, and blown his own brains out all over the captain's quarters, we felt a sort of emptiness in the pit of our stomachs. I know that Sullivan and Bentz, my trusted lieutenants, acknowledged feeling the same—an emptiness born of desperate fear and hatred.
For we knew that the Egyptian was too weak to wrestle a giant such as Harding for a weapon, and we were certain that had he managed such a feat, the 9mm slug would have splattered Harding's brain onto the deck. Any one of us would have done the same.
"Core, you gotta take command," Sullivan whispered later, as we reclined under the makeshift tent I'd stretched from a lifeboat davit to the rail. Almost everyone had given up their cabins or crew's quarters during the day, when the sun baked the inside of
the ship like a Tandoori oven. During the day, the deck had become a sea of tarpaulins and stretched blankets, as men swung from homemade hammocks and tried not to think of their misery even as the chants of the porters threatened to overwhelm their brains with the constant reminder of where we were.
"Do you hear me, lad?" Sullivan was older than me by only a few years, but he'd taken to calling me "lad" as if he was an old man. Come to think of it, he looked older. We all did.
"I hear you. Bentz says the same thing. But if we fail, Harding's going to have us all tried for mutiny. Those he and Gunther don't gun down. Or maybe he'll kill us himself."
"Yeah, maybe he'll kill us anyway." Sullivan punched my arm. "So we ain't got much to lose. This kinda life ain't so much like livin', it's more like floatin' in limbo. Or a coffin."
The anchorage had indeed become a living tomb, and we the walking dead who lived there. I had waking dreams of the open sea, a fresh breeze blowing through my porthole, fresh cool water to drink, beer for the hottest time of the day, and then warm coffee for the cold of the night. All we had to do was abandon the rest of the ore and steam north a day or two to Bombay, where all we needed would be at our fingertips. Where the authorities would arrest Harding and his goons and liberate us, and the Corporation would fly in another captain who would take us home and end our stay in hell.
I didn't know how the decision had been made, but it had. Bombay—I would set a course for Bombay and our salvation.
I nodded, and Sullivan waited to see if I would change my mind. But he knew I wouldn't, and he braved the blistering sun to spread the word that the end was in sight, if we stuck together.
* * *
A third of our remaining crew would have nothing to do with it, claiming it would only make things worse. They retreated to the waterproof compartments below decks, fully willing to broil inside their bodies until the deed was done, successful or not, so they might be spared by Harding, whom they considered the winner even before our attempt.
The rest crowded into the companionway and massed, waiting for one of us to step forward and bang on the captain's door. I knew that would be me, Corelli, the second officer. I waited for courage to flow into my veins and move my limbs, but that was when the door opened and Harding stepped out with the Mauser in his fist and Gunther with his Schmeisser behind us, and Idalgo with his lady's gun at his master's elbow, and I made my speech with conviction and fear of imminent death.
The wave of odors, which escaped the captain's quarters and washed over us in that close companionway will remain etched in my olfactory memory until my last moment—a stench of death, decay, spices, sweat and urine, and something darker, mustier, and somehow more repellent than all the others put together.
"Sir, we have been in this port forty-nine days. The loading will take at least three more weeks to finish at this pace. We are down to a cup of water per man per day. The local water is contaminated, or so we are told. Our alcohol rations are running low, as is our food supply. The men have been warned to avoid leaving the ship due to the cholera epidemic. We have dead men in the cold room, and we now number nearly a dozen cases of dysentery in the infirmary. I speak only facts, sir, and I must insist that you cut short our stay and allow us to head for a friendly port where we can recover from the disaster that has been this voyage since we first set out. With all due respect, sir, we implore your humanity."
The lamps twitched as if tugged on a single chain pull.
The pressure in my head built until the pain seemed almost too much to bear. I looked at Sullivan, and at Bentz, and their grimacing faces confirmed what I felt. A keening wail seemed to slice through our eardrums and I saw that blood was indeed leaking from the ears of some of the men. I saw that we were no longer a group of well-intentioned seekers of justice, but a mob of ragged scarecrows in the grasp of something larger—something more complex than anything we had ever imagined in our puny lives.
And through it all, Captain Harding's eyes, surveying the landscape of my soul.
Through the open cabin door I glimpsed the long crate, open now and propped onto the captain's desk, positioned so the body within stared at me through mummified eye-sockets that were screwed shut but somehow still managed to bore into my eyes with an intensity that nearly loosened my bowels where I stood. It was Saint Francis Xavier himself, of that I have no doubt any more, though at the time I was hesitant to admit to myself what I had seen. Harding had somehow procured the sainted remains for his own uses, of which we would never have the opportunity to learn. I scarcely had the chance to register the sight, or turn toward Bentz and Sullivan and the others, or call out, or shout a warning, or indeed even cower in the face of the fear I felt. I scarcely had the chance because just then the connection was broken as Idalgo, the spineless Spaniard henchman stepped slightly aside, coming between me and the saint's horrible gaze, and the words Captain Harding spoke were slow and deliberate, delivered in some sort of chant which lulled my mind and dulled my senses—I am more convinced of this every day now—and spoke to my soul and to the souls of the others and drew from us a promise, or a vow, or some sort of assent, and made us all complicit in the actions that he had taken and those he was about to take.
And then Harding's other hand, the one he'd hidden behind his back, flashed out and in his grip was a strangely rippled blade (a kris, I have since learned), its long bejeweled hilt and crossguard reflecting the blinking, strobing companionway lights even after its point had found and penetrated the belly of Idalgo, whose surprised look before the pain came proved that he'd been unaware of this part of the plan, yes, and then he dropped the empty revolver. Only then did I realize that I had seen subconsciously the empty cylinder chambers—that Idalgo had always been a part of the plan, just not the part he thought.
The Spaniard dropped the revolver into the gore pooling at his feet and looked up at his master, who still held the knife deeply embedded in his organs. Harding then jerked the blade upward, sawing into Idalgo's living torso and making him twitch like a life-size marionette until he'd been split open from belly to sternum like the corpse he already was, even if his brain had not yet registered the fact.
We—foiled mutineers—stood in the strobing lights, the smell of blood and feces mingling with the other, more pervasive stench from the captain's cabin, and suddenly our purpose seemed as dim as a light far away down a railway tunnel. We had no purpose except to obey our captain. When he and Gunther passed around the flagon filled with Idalgo's hot, coppery blood and watched as we partook, Bentz, Sullivan, I, and the others, bodies shivering as if suffering from the ague, we were then united under the weight of our complicity—the sacrifice of one for the lives of many, perhaps.
I accept now that I will never know, only suspect.
The memory is a funny thing, for it took nearly forty years for some of these images to resolve into a whole I could almost understand, and by then it was too late.
It is too late.
You see, after the hasty inquest established that seven crewmen had died of disease due to the primitive conditions of our port of call and not negligence of the officers, I was able to track Voss Harding eventually—to a new name and face, and the CEO's office of a three-letter company you would surely recognize, where he ruled with a legendary iron fist and made billions. At least until last month, when he suddenly disappeared.
I remained a long-distance friend of Sullivan and Bentz, my compatriots in our failed mutiny, who helped me finally take the S.S. Caritas back home laden with silver and other, more esoteric treasure. Their memory, too, was flawed, but we agreed that something had happened to us at the hands of Captain Voss Harding. Occasionally we even tried to talk about it. At least until a month ago, when Bentz disappeared. And two weeks ago, when Sullivan went missing.
I have since seen photographs of the mummy of Saint Francis Xavier, and its features strangely resemble those of the treacherous Idalgo.
Perhaps payment is now due for whatever he—we—purchased
that day, long ago, in the split harbor of Panaji, Goa.
I fear the collector is on his way.
BENEATH THE SURFACE
Stuart Keane
"I always did love this beach."
Felicity caught the inflection, the almost romantic notion, in her husband's voice. She smiled at the back of his head as he ambled in front, taking in the gorgeous scenery before him. To the left, a gentle wave lapped the soggy sand.
Felicity smiled. "Is that why you proposed to me here?"
Simon turned. "Yeah…that and I've never seen a syringe or a lump of shit on the sand."
She gasped. "You animal."
"You know I am," he smiled. "C'mon, let's go for a stroll."
Felicity glanced up at the sky. "It's getting dark, though."
"Kissing on a beach, under the stars, just moonlight and our unrequited love. Surely that gets me husband points, does it not?"
"Maybe." Felicity took her husband's hand, stroking the back of it, feeling the downy hair there, and strolled beside him. "Maybe it'll get you more than that." She winked and led him further along the spotless, sandy dunes.
Simon followed his wife of two years, smiling, not a care in the world.
The air was sea-fresh and just the right temperature, warm, but not humid. He normally refrained from public displays of affection, but he'd scoped out the beach, and no one was around. Dune Beach didn’t have a reputation for its original name but it was famous for its privacy, its intimate seclusion. Many a time, Simon had relaxed on the beach, undisturbed for hours. The dunes rose and dipped in a way that gave everyone, in theory, their own private patch of sand.
As Felicity skipped ahead, he gazed up at the sky. The darkness of dusk was starting to ebb into the blue of daylight. Maybe we should come back, he thought.
Fearful Fathoms: Collected Tales of Aquatic Terror (Vol. I - Seas & Oceans) Page 17